From an interesting article in The Daily Mail, quoting Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run:
In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one.
Worth a read, if you’re into running.
Yesterday was the Geelong half-marathon, my “debut at this distance”, as the online registration form puts it.
I wasn’t sure of a realistic target time, but I decided I’d be happy with anything under 2 hours. In the end I managed a 1:46:something (official times not yet posted as of this writing), which was satisfying.
A few things I learned along the way:
- I could have gone slightly harder at the beginning.
- Grabbing plastic cups while on the run is not as easy as it looks. I opted for the “pinch-from-the-top” technique, which worked pretty well.
- I have to focus more on running my own race, and less on not letting other people pass me.
- If I am going to get into a battle with someone, I should at least be sure of who it is.
A little explication of the last point is in order:
I started towards the back of the pack, so most of the (many) people who were faster than me were already ahead. This meant that I overtook quite a few people, while not being overtaken very often.
Around the 17km mark, I noticed a maroon shirt out of the corner of my eye. I turned and looked, and there was a guy closing in on me. I sized him up - around my age, heavier than me, breathing raggedly - and decided that he allowed to past.
I put on the pace for a little while and put some distance between us before easing back off. A few minutes later, I heard him coming up behind me and saw that maroon shirt in the corner of my vsion, so I put on the pace again.
This happened four or five times over the next couple of kilometres and eventually it became too much for me. I decided to smarten up, let him past, and run my own race. I maintained a steady pace, paid no attention to the maroon shirt cruising into my periph, and lo and behold, it was an entirely different guy - older, fitter, definitely a runner, also wearing a maroon shirt. I turned and looked behind me for the original Maroon Shirt, and he was nowhere to be seen. I felt sort of stupid about the whole thing, but it probably did shave a couple of minutes off my time.
Update: Big thanks to Cam for the drive out there and back. It was a real treat not having to operate pedals after the race.
For a while now, Daniel, Mark, Marcia and I have been training for the Oxfam Trailwalker, a 100km walk to be completed in 48 hours(!). We have a target of $1000 to raise between the four of us, and just as with the walk itself, there is still have a long way to go.
If you are willing and able to give, please do so at our online donation page.
Much appreciated.
I drafted a fairly long and boring post about this, but it boils down to this:
1. I’m planning on attempting the Gold Coast Marathon in July this year; and
2. I’m announcing it here in order to make myself commit to it.
Wish me luck.
I recently came across pipl, the “people search engine”, courtesy of a ReadWriteWeb article. Despite the cutesy, slightly chunderous, intentional-mispelling-as-branding name, it was an experience.
Like many, I’m incredibly self-involved, so the first person I looked up (”pipled”? - ugh!) was myself. Once you get past the all the false positives (”Taylor Dayne may be the greatest musical artist of all time”), it turns out that, yes, it found stuff about me that even I don’t bother remembering any more.
For example, I was a sad little man in university, posting meaningless little one-liners to aus.tv newsgroups. I suspect I was just trying to show off the “awesome” signature that I appended to everything.
On the upside, the “Quick Facts” section included the “fact” that I am a direct descendent [sic] of Pai Mei, the bad-ass Kung Fu master out of the Kill Bill movies. Of course, I had some part in putting that notion out there.
